Coin of the Day

The all-in-one
regulated blockchain

(CRYPTO: LKK) Lykke is building a regulated blockchain-backed ecosystem that takes out the middleman for a variety of asset classes and "financial instruments" (financial contracts) at the institutional level. Started in 2015, the project is creating a wallet, exchange, margin trading platform, payment system, and alpha trading network that will help with liquidity, decrease volatility, and increase price discovery. The entire system is, quite frankly, a bit overwhelming to read about, but provides crypto new(ish)comers with an ecosystem that's relatively easy to use and seems more coherent than most existing crypto trading platforms. For a quick overview, check out their investor deck (but if you'd like to do some real digging, here's their whitepaper).

Can't stop won't stop. There's a mix of excitement and fear as Bitcoin passed $16,000 this morning. What drove the price, and why?

First of all, calm down. Your altcoins will probably be fine, but the market dramatically shifted in favor of Bitcoin this morning, which means that many people are currently putting their money in BTC as the price drastically rises. Surpassing the $16,000 mark this morning on CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin increased a total of $3,000 in 24 hours (depending on which exchange you're looking at) – a terrifying but thrilling record. What's interesting is that the price hike seems to have occurred despite recent current events, rather than because of them. If anything, there's faith within the crypto community concerning long-term price hold and evangelists such as Andreas Antonopolis, who was gifted $700,000 worth of Bitcoin as a thank you for helping cryptocurrency go mainstream.

For those who claim #bitcoin community is divided, the bitcoin community raised over $700,000 for @aantonop, who has worked tirelessly over the past three years to educate the masses about bitcoin.

Meanwhile, in Asia, things have been getting a bit weird – but not exactly impacting crypto's price. South Korea announced yesterday that they would be banning Bitcoin futures, which was a controversial development in the space as is. While South Korea's government may not be too keen on crypto from a regulation standpoint, its citizens are some of the most enthusiastic traders when it comes to digital assets. Crypto mania has been so fervent the past few weeks that Bitcoin is trading at a 23% premium in South Korea; something that rarely happens unless the government-backed currencies are a bit shaky (see: Zimbabwe).

Also, the newest nominee for the United States Federal Reserve may have something else to do with Bitcoin's price increase. Marvin Goodfriend, as CoinTelegraph reports, has been "hailed both as a visionary and as the ‘worst Fed nominee of all time,’" but has been staunchly anti-fiat for some time now. Is it enough to support crypto's rise? Most likely not – but we love a dramatic story, so we're getting out the popcorn and watching his nomination process to the end.

Finally, the tidal wave of demand for Bitcoin's limited supply is seriously helping its rise, as some people think that we're looking at a trillion dollars being invested in the market in 2018. We can only hope...

Does the CryptoKitties problem prove Ethereum isn't ready for mass-adoption right meow?

Meet CryptoKitties: the "digital, breedable beanie baby" of 2017. Described as the crypto version of Neopets and Tamagotchi, CryptoKitties is an online marketplace where you can buy, sell, breed, and customize your very own digital feline from the comfort of your home. As cats are bred, specific traits become rarer, thus making some of the online cats rarer than others. While they're indeed cute, these "rare" CrytpoKitties can carry a hefty price tag, ranging from a few dollars to upwards of $100,000. Yeah, we know. It's a bit ridiculous. So why are people spending their hard earned money on them? While there isn't a hard-core utility to the pets, people are attracted by blockchain's ability to track ownership and prevents artificial inflation of each online cat. Some people we spoke to are even using the game to teach their children about cryptocurrency. Education through blockchain-backed gaming is a fantastic use case, and we're surprised it hasn't come along sooner. Speculation on the price of these little felines is also a major factor in their popularity right now, keeping in line with the dynamic gaming and digital assets culture. Fur-tastic.

Now for the critical problem with the program's popularity: it resulted in a bit of a clog on the Ethereum network because CryptoKitties is built on the ETH blockchain. Yesterday, it took up around 13.5% of the network's power and has even delayed token sales due to the influx of people buying and selling these online beanie babies. Don't worry, Ethereum's founder is actually into the CryptoKitties game, explaining that they show a different use case for blockchain rather than overvalued ICOs. Not everyone is thrilled about this idea, though.

Blockchains with "cheap" transactions become victims of their own success. It happened with "free Bitcoin" (Satoshi Dice + spam ended that), it could easily happen to Ethereum. https://t.co/zlcS4Z16AX

Players have already traded over $7 million in CryptoKitties on the platform in the last week, which has forced ETH users to deal with trading issues head-on. It also raises some questions about Ethereum's scalability problem; an aspect of cryptocurrency networks – both exchanges and blockchains – in the past few weeks as crypto's popularity has risen with their prices. Are CryptoKitties worth the hype? Perhaps – only time will show how people creatively use them. Are they incredibly cute? Most definitely.

Wikipedia's about to get much better thanks to Blockchain. It may take the guesswork out of reading their articles.

Coin to Watch

What else can we say besides Bitcoin (BTC)? We've been waiting with bated breath for the price to slow down (it has not, yet), and we'll have to wait and see how it interacts with the futures trading on December 10th.

Daily LOL

Oops!

Did you know that #Bitcoin has lost over 97% of its value since it was created - oh wait, that’s the United States dollar!